Annapolis was fun as long as I viewed it strictly as a tourist experience. Our bus full of legislative staff people rolled in about 9:30 AM in back of Capitol Circle and I and the other guests left Judy and her gang to work hard in the workshops while we ran amuck in the City!
What an incredible maze of streets! I did locate the Drummer's Lot, the pub in the cattacombs of the Maryland Inn where the sea music folks gather every 3rd Thursday at 8 pm but no one was around other than a person repainting the trim. I thought about making some pun about painters and sheets... It looked like a snug place to sing with lots of atmosphere. In my inspection of posters, flyers, music tabloids there was no mention of this event; I hope this doesn't mean that the people who "do it" only want to do it with their friends.
Everything else was pretty closed down at this hour of the morning so I wandered down Maryland St. onto the Naval Academy grounds and spent a couple of peaceful hours looking at their incredible collection of naval artifacs and ship models at Preble Hall. I highly recommend it if you're not into shopping for trinkets and the pubs are not open for business.
I then popped over to the Senate Buiding to join Judy for lunch. After lunch I made my way down Main St. to see if there was anything left of the port area that I remembered from coming ashore there back in 1965:
The ships I knew laid up or lost, The ports I knew grown strange...
About sums it up. I was briefly intrigued by the name of one of the downtown streets, Compromise St., which the nice ladies at the tourist information booth failed to enlighten me about. I do love a good mystery, and had pleasant thoughts of having wqalked down a surviving remnant of sailortown. There were some interesting pubs open by then and I popped into one of them and had an Aviator's Ale. The propriator had been a long time flyer before openning the pub in the gentle years of his retirement. I'm not sure if this was one of the pubs I visited with my shipmates back in 1965. There were at least a dozen of them and my memory even the next morning was somewhat blurred.
I then went down to the docks and practiced concertina to the amusement of the local artists and a few fellow tourists. Someone actually stuffed a dollar into my concertina bag. Such easy money could go to my head.
Judy and her gang showed up around 4:30 and we boarded a cruise boat back to Baltimore and I must say I enjoy a good sunset cruise, and the free drinks and food were quite adequate. My only complaint was the musac but what the hay, when you're on the boat you go with the flow.
Tomorrow, I'll make another foray to Fells Point and nose around the Wharf Rat Pub which I failed to find the first time around. That's where the Baltimore sea music folks are supposed to hang out on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. This time I have better directions.